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The struggling U.S. Postal Service on Thursday reported an annual loss of a record $15.9 billion and forecast more red ink in 2013, capping a tumultuous year in which it was forced to default on billions in payments to avert bankruptcy.

If the USPS lost $3.1 billion in just one quarter they need to go on an emergency
plan ASAP. Close all post offices on Saturday, and maybe one day a week also. Get rid of managers who are not managing more than ten people. Rid all of overtime and put a freeze on hiring. How can they justify loosing so much of the taxpayers money, in such a small period of time? .

That's not entirely true, of course. The USPS is in hock to the US Treasury for the $15 billion it has borrowed to date to stay afloat. However, that's the current legal limit of its borrowing authority; so there's no more leeway at that end.

The US Postal "Service" has not been a federal agency since 1971 when they where the US Post Office Department and the Post Master General was part of the Presidents cabnet. In 1971 they became a qusi federal agency totally funded by postage sales and contracts for service. The problem is they never really acted like a for profit business and missed many opporunities over the years to break into other profit making ventures. So you see they have no taxpayer money to lose because tey get none. However, they are still beholding to congress and becasue they are not a federal agency and they stayed in the federal benifits system they have to pre fund there obligation. Something no federal agency has to do. They need to sart there own benifits system, should have done it 40 years ago and they need to act like the for profit business they are.

"Is not the $11 Billion Dollar Senate approved infusion (BAIL OUT) tax dollars?"
Nope! Not a single penny of it is tax dollars. All of it is coming from the USPS FERS retirement fund and it has been contributed by USPS from its postage revenues and by USPS employees by payroll deduction.
A word of advice: don't allow the pundits to blind you with simplistic catch words like "bailout." For the most part they are meaningless and are always inadequate to describe complex issues.

the U.S. Postal Service is one of the best in the World but we in the U.S. do not recognize that. Try receiving something mailed first class from 3,000 miles away in two days in another part of the World - you'll be lucky. Also, most of the employees that interact with the public are friendly and know their job. They need to get rid of the heavy overhead that they have to carry, especially in benefits. Heck, how many people do they have on disability that are past retirement age? Perhaps a start would to be rid of the union since they appear to be more interested in self-survival than in helping the USPS survive. I think the union and some employees would rather have the USPS scrapped than find a feasible way to keep it solvent. Sometimes you have to release a few to keep the majority, that's how business works.

I'm happy with USPS service and their personnel, but if insufficient mail volume is the problem, why not change the normal delivery cycle to be every other day, M-W-F for half the folks and Tu-Th-S for the rest? That certainly will suffice for bulk/junk mail. If something needs to be delivered sooner, then require it to be sent with higher priority than first class. That should enable USPS to drastically shrink its mail delivery staff and vehicle fleet.